don't know about "class", but some cards have faster write speeds. if you have a camera that pumps out a lot of megapixels and maybe shoot in RAW format, it could take a while to write the pic onto the card - or even the read speed could suck, which would make it take longer to play back onto the LCD. if you haven't been frustrated with any of this already, your card is fine.

after some googling, yes, it looks like higher class=faster speed. i always just go on a message board for my camera and see what everyone else has - and buy that one.

it's a complicated hobby. ISO, for example, is a fundamental concept, but it's completely baffling. i know what the effects of changing your ISO are, but there's no way to actually explain how it works without goofy metaphors.

shmenguin wrote:after some googling, yes, it looks like higher class=faster speed. i always just go on a message board for my camera and see what everyone else has - and buy that one.

it's a complicated hobby. ISO, for example, is a fundamental concept, but it's completely baffling. i know what the effects of changing your ISO are, but there's no way to actually explain how it works without goofy metaphors.

It seems that way, and im the type of person that has zero patience and is easily frustrated. I hope I can get the hang of it.

Well I ordered that book that shmenguin and LITT suggested. Messed around tonight with that reddit thread canaan linked, and Posted some of my first pix. My only subjects that were willing to cooperate were of the canine species.. lol. Can't wait to get out this weekend and shoot some outdoorsy shots, im never home during the day. Constructive criticism is appreciated.

shmenguin wrote:it's a complicated hobby. ISO, for example, is a fundamental concept, but it's completely baffling. i know what the effects of changing your ISO are, but there's no way to actually explain how it works without goofy metaphors.

Now you got me curious to know how digital ISO is explained, as its a pretty simple concept when discussing film - it's how fast the film reacts to light. A film that reacts to light faster allows you to use faster shutter speeds in dim light situations, but at the cost of increased graininess - which is also true of digital images.

mac5155 wrote:one question I have, is it normal to use a flash a lot? I always thought you rarely needed a flash with a DSLR.

you can get away with not using flash a little more with a DSLR because of lens options and better sensors, but generally, if you want to get a good, crisp shot, you need light from somewhere. so if there isn't enough light coming from the windows or light fixtures, you gotta use the flash. also, based on the descriptions of your lenses, the lowest aperture they go to is probably somewhere around f5. to be able to avoid flash, you will often need a lens that goes down to f2.8 or lower. i don't know about canon, but nikon has an awesome 50mm lens that is under $200 and shoots all the way down at f1.8. i imagine there's a comparable lens for canon cameras. with a 1.8 aperture, a ton of light can get through to the camera sensor, which will give you more flexibility. and 50mm is a really versatile focal length.

but even under good light conditions, you'd be surprised how often experienced photographers will use flash. for instance, on a sunny day, it's often better to have people stand in the shade and use flash on them rather than just have them get blasted by the harsh sun. or if you're near sunset, instead of having people face the sun and use it as your light source, it's sometimes better to have the sun hit their backs and shoot flash into them to light them up.

and then there's the tricky part about how the pop-up flash on your camera is generally pretty terrible. unfortunately, you're probably going to have to get an external flash that slides onto the mount on top of your DSLR if you want to be able to take great flash pics. it's a better light source, and the ability to point it at the ceiling or a wall to "bounce" it is extremely critical.

of course Hockeynut is the pro, so maybe he might be able to correct me if i'm giving you bad info. i'm still fairly green here.

Yeah, i have noticed the pop up flash sucks. I've been getting a lot of shadow on the pictures. I noticed there was a setting on the camera to compensate for the flash and it seemed to reduce the harshness of the shadow. Once that book gets here and i read it cover to cover, I hope to have a better idea of how to correct that.

mac5155 wrote:Yeah, i have noticed the pop up flash sucks. I've been getting a lot of shadow on the pictures. I noticed there was a setting on the camera to compensate for the flash and it seemed to reduce the harshness of the shadow. Once that book gets here and i read it cover to cover, I hope to have a better idea of how to correct that.

harsh shadow is largely corrected by bouncing the flash off the ceiling. adding a light diffuser helps too, but don't worry about that yet.

one option is to try to minimize flash use by adjusting your other settings. if you slow the shutter, lower the aperture and raise your iso, the flash will have to do less heavy lifting, so it won't shoot with as much power - leading to less harshness.

mac5155 wrote:Wouldn't it be hard to keep the image in focus at that low of an aperture? Just spitballing here with my limited knowledge.

yeah, it's called depth of field. if you go all the way down to 1.8 or so, then only a thin sliver of your shot will be in perfect focus. so if you lock in on someone's eye, their nose will actually be a little blurry, for instance. that's not necessarily a bad thing though. if you have one subject you're shooting, there's nothing wrong with having that "shallow" depth of field (always try to focus on the eye in these cases). but in a group shot, it can be a nightmare.

one of the things that made the biggest difference for me was turning off the autofocus points and choosing the point i wanted manually. it was tough at first but now im pretty fluid with the track wheel and adjusting automatically. always comical when someone tries to use my camera tho

I was messing around with that too and I couldnt figure out how to adjust the focus points so I was just leaving the autofocus on. When im shooting with the LCD instead of the viewfinder the autofocus is very laggy for some reason.

Letang Is The Truth wrote:one of the things that made the biggest difference for me was turning off the autofocus points and choosing the point i wanted manually. it was tough at first but now im pretty fluid with the track wheel and adjusting automatically. always comical when someone tries to use my camera tho

i use that type of focusing 99.99% of the time.

mac, if it's slow to focus, are you in a dark room? your lens can have trouble finding its target if it's dark.

Letang Is The Truth wrote:one of the things that made the biggest difference for me was turning off the autofocus points and choosing the point i wanted manually. it was tough at first but now im pretty fluid with the track wheel and adjusting automatically. always comical when someone tries to use my camera tho

i use that type of focusing 99.99% of the time.

mac, if it's slow to focus, are you in a dark room? your lens can have trouble finding its target if it's dark.

It wasnt overly dark, but I think the times it did it was having trouble finding the target, like you said.

Another camera question, since there seem to be quite a few people here who know about them. My wife wants a new camera, but probably not ready for DSLR. It will be used for a lot of action pictures (volleyball and soccer) as well as normal vacation type pics. She wants it to have a good zoom (currently have Sony Cyber Shot with 15x optical zoom, but don't really know what that means). What should I be looking for in a camera in terms of specs?

We finally replaced our film SLR last month - a manual focus Minolta X-700. We waited 10 years, but bought the Canon T3i kit with two lenses (18-55 & 55-200) from Costco for 729.99. Had considered the 60D and the Nikon D3200 as well. They aren't full frame (way to expensive yet) but are 3:2 ratio. Which means no cropping when making prints. And in the strange department, found two exposed but undeveloped rolls of film - one C41 print roll and one E6 slide roll. Got the prints developed at Costco, with their $2.99 CD, turned out the roll was from when our oldest was born back in 2004. I hadn't even recalled having the film SLR with us for that, but i guess we didn't get our first mid-level Kodak until October of that year.

I spent $35 for a mount adapter to be able to use my MD lenses with the Canon. For manual focus, works just fine, and saves having to replace the good quality lenses I had. I don't carry the old Vivitar telephoto lens (70-210) in the new bag, but do carry the 28mm f/2.8 Minolta lens. Though for chasing trains, nothing works better than manual focus for rapid shooting without waiting for the camera to refocus itself. It's been a little bit of a learning curve on the Canon buttons, but it's not hard. About the only thing I haven't done yet is get UV filters for the 58mm ring of the Canon lenses, and get some damn tethers for the lens caps. The ones I had already were 49mm, 55mm and 67mm rings.

In the 3+ weeks of having the Canon, we've shot over 1400 images, so already below 50 cents an image. One thing to be wary - its 720p HD video takes up over 1GB of space for a 2 minute video!